


Gold For Me, Silver For You

by Arej



Series: Ineffable Advent 2019 [10]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Idiots in Love, M/M, Other, Pining, aziraphale might be ready to go a bit faster, but these two idiots won't talk about it, conversations about jewelry, crowley is going as slow as he possibly can, secret gift giving, they're not really male but it's m/m since i used male pronouns throughout
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-10
Updated: 2019-12-10
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:42:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,197
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21749965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arej/pseuds/Arej
Summary: Day 10 of the advent calendar of prompts.Aziraphale spots a lovely ring in the window, but despite Crowley's urging, something about it isn't quite right.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: Ineffable Advent 2019 [10]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1561027
Comments: 16
Kudos: 186





	Gold For Me, Silver For You

They’re on their way to dinner - a new place not too far from the bookshop promises genuine Cajun cuisine - when Aziraphale stops suddenly at a shop window. Crowley, following at his usual bare half step behind the angel, dances in place to avoid a collision.

He manages to turn the awkward shuffle into a swing around to Aziraphale’s right, then back to the left, and peers in the window to see what’d caught his attention so abruptly. “What is it, angel?”

“What a lovely piece.”

They’ve stopped out front of a jewelry shop; the window is full of glittering, shining things. Black calligraphic letters along the bottom edge announce each piece to be “handmade and unique.”

The cynic in Crowley is automatically suspicious - surely the artist has repeated one or two of their more acclaimed pieces, it’s not like people would know - but they do all look very nice. “Which?”

“That one there.” Aziraphale gestures to a ring, left of center, perched on a discreet stand and titled just so to catch the equally discreet spotlight.

It’s a snake, forged in silver, looping along and across itself until it stretches roughly the distance between a first and second knuckle, with a rounded head extending just a bit beyond that. The middlemost coil is twisted downward to embrace the wearer’s finger, the tail tucked in on itself. The engraved scales seem to shift under the motionless light; the two sapphire eyes positively sparkle. It looks eerily like the snake tattoo that coils along his temple given three dimensions.

There is a hitch in Crowley’s entirely unnecessary heartbeat as he takes in the details.

“You should get it,” he hears himself say. “It’s a custom shop, I can’t imagine they’ll have another.”

When Aziraphale shakes his head in negation, the heartbeat hitch becomes more of a leaden feeling. Crowley attempts to swallow past the sudden rush of disappointment that has absolutely no business clogging his throat. It doesn’t matter. It’s just a piece of jewelry, not a symbol. It doesn’t _mean_ anything. 

But the angel is explaining. “- should wear gold.”

“Sorry?” He’d missed the first part - _should_ wear? Who?

“Heaven’s orders,” Aziraphale responds, which is unfortunately all the clarification Crowley needs. “Gold is for angels; anything else is unacceptable. They’ve gotten very strict about it. Which is a shame, really; I’ve always loved the look of silver. I think it’s quite beautiful.”

“It suits you,” Crowley answers automatically, thinking of winged silver cuff links, a half-forgotten pocket watch engraved to match. Thinking of cloud white curls held in place with silver pins. Thinking of a night in late fifteenth century Florence, and how a delicate set of silver jewelry once set off the fathomless blue of angelic eyes so perfectly Crowley had to hide behind a half-screen to compose himself when their paths crossed unexpectedly.

He very carefully does not blush at the admission, or the warm but distracted smile Aziraphale aims his way.

“Thank you, dearest. It did, didn’t it? Quite right for my coloring, the way gold suits you so well.” Aziraphale fidgets with the ring on his pinky, then, shoots a surreptitious look at Crowley from under lowered lashes. 

“You don’t have to wear gold, angel,” Crowley offers gently. His voice comes out softer than the snow drifting down around them. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want. Not anymore.”

The angel hums in thought for a moment. “I’ve had it for so long, now, it would be strange to just…discard it.”

 _Let me keep it for you,_ Crowley does not say. _You said gold suits me; let me hold it for you. I have the perfect finger to keep it on, it’ll fit just right; you know the one. Hand it to me, let me keep it safe there, on a direct path to my heart._

“You can still wear silver, even if you’re not ready to part with it,” he offers instead. “All that nonsense about not mixing your metals is just that - nonsense.”

When Aziraphale merely hums in agreement, eyes still fixed on the snake ring, he adds, “That was my fault, you know.”

It does the trick, breaks the spell; the angel chuckles and looks over at him. “I did know.”

“So get it.” Crowley gestures to the ring. He can see the shopkeeper, back behind the long counter, watching them with poorly concealed anticipation. “You’ll make her day.”

But Aziraphale shakes his head yet again. “It’s not quite right, I’m afraid.”

The shopkeeper must be psychic; her face mirrors the one Crowley would wear, right now, if he weren’t so careful: disappointment, and frustration. “No?”

“The eyes aren’t right,” Aziraphale clarifies, and Crowley feels each syllable like an arrow to the chest, piercing deep and filling him with something bright and lighter than air. “Such a shame; the details are lovely. Just not right for me. Shall we?”

He turns, then, and starts off; Crowley spends one stunned second hesitating, then makes a complicated flurry of gestures at the bewildered shopkeeper. He doesn’t wait for the confusion to clear from her face before taking off after the angel, still feeling oddly like a balloon has gotten lodged somewhere under his sternum.

He’s distracted through dinner, but that’s alright - the jumbalaya is excellently spiced, the _cochon de lait_ perfectly succulent, and the beignets fresh, so Aziraphale is distracted enough by the quality of the cuisine that Crowley can relax as the evening progresses. Aziraphale, too, is fidgety, more than just the usual wriggling excitement over a new restaurant to add to the rotation of favorites. He winds the ring around his pinky in distracted circles, bles- _thankfully_ unaware of how he’s winding Crowley’s heart in circles, too, with every twist. 

Crowley writes the added fiddling off as a side effect of their jewelry shop conversation; his angel has never done all that well with change, or with intentional disobedience - final days of Armageddon’t aside. It’s gotten better, these past few months, but there’s so much further to go. They have time.

As Crowley relaxes, so too does Aziraphale, until by the time the beignets arrive there isn’t a spot of tension to be found.

Eventually they settle back at the bookshop, having explored a full three-quarters of the restaurant’s menu; Crowley tries his hand at mixing hurricanes in the spirit of the evening, which Aziraphale declares, if not perfect, at least as close as they’ll get outside of New Orleans proper. They while away the rest of the evening with laughter, and memories, and perhaps one too many hurricanes apiece.

It isn’t until much, much later - inebriation miracled away, the fire in the hearth burned down to embers, Crowley sprawled across the sofa as a slumbering pile of limbs in the vague shape of a demon - that Aziraphale, wandering around the bookshop with a mug of cocoa, enjoying the decorations, spots it:

A snake ring, every loop and coil a match to the one he’d seen in the shop window, down to the last engraved scale. It dangles from a branch at the very edge of the Christmas tree, surrounded by warm white bulbs.

Its citrine eyes positively glow.

**Author's Note:**

> (For clarity: yes, it's the same ring. Crowley's complicated gestures were about miracling it off the stand, and money into the till, and making the shopkeeper think that had all happened the way normal human beings buy rings, not demonic miracles cutting the process down to seconds. The eye color change happened as it perched itself on the Christmas tree; the artist will never know. She'll also never make another one - Crowley's holding her to that 'unique' bit.)


End file.
